It is a well-known fact among the residents of hidden villages that ninja do not like surprises. There is something about training a person from an early age to be a killing machine that inevitably leaves them with a "stab first, ask questions later" philosophy in the face of the unexpected. In fact, the Uchiha clan massacre actually began as an attempt to give Uchiha Itachi a surprise birthday party.

While cleaning up the bloody aftermath, it was discovered that they'd also gotten him socks. Whether this was a contributing factor or not is still unknown.

But really. Socks.

At any rate, those with sense usually politely refrain from startling ninja in much the same way as a person with an undeclawed cat curled on their lap might refrain from any sudden movements that could encourage the cat to improve its traction.

...but as the poets have generally implied, sense and love are often mutually exclusive. And sense and the random bouts of infatuation that seem to run pandemic amongst the population of Konoha wouldn't know each other if Sense became a missing nin that had to be hunted down by Random Infatuation, dragged into a dark alley, and unceremoniously garroted.

(Ninja metaphors tend to be a bit heavy on the bloodshed.)

Some of them were pink.

He hadn't actually opened them. Kakashi hadn't made much of a habit of opening his mail in the past and this definitely seemed the wrong time to start. He'd have burned them, except that his rather sensitive nose had quickly noted that at least one of them was rather heavily perfumed and thus was probably dangerously flammable.

So he settled for double-bagging them in plastic trash bags.

When he'd then gone to throw the bag in the dumpster in back he'd been alarmed to find two bouquets of flowers and a few other less identifiable packages on his front step.

At this rate, he was going to need more trash bags.

He started off towards the memorial stone, bags slung over his back, only to find that the whole town seemed to have experienced a rain of pink flyers overnight. Okay, change of plan. And because Hatake Kakashi was, after all, a genius at strategy, it took only seconds for him to create a new one.

First, dump the bags. Second: visit the memorial stone, say hello to Obito, explain to him that he couldn't stay very long today... Obito, having never reached puberty, would still have thought girls were icky, so he'd probably understand having to flee them. Then assign Team Seven to flyer cleanup duty until further notice.

Then... he'd try to talk to Gai again.

The problem was that while Kakashi could out-smell Gai, out-plan Gai, out-quiet Gai, and on a good day with a decent tailwind out-run Gai, he couldn't out-talk Gai. For volume, duration, words of at least three syllables, and sheer DETERMINATION, Gai's vocal chords won hands down.

But then, Gai PRACTICED a lot more.

(Kakashi also couldn't out-GREEN Gai, but then, no one could. And that's probably for the best.)

Iruka looked up from the papers he was grading. Usually he had today off, but Michiko-san was ill and he'd been asked to fill in for her. The mission desk was quiet enough though, that he'd been able to bring in a stack of essays to work on.

Unfortunately, the mission room being quiet meant that everyone there had nothing better to do than discuss the latest village gossip... which just happened to be Sharingan Kakashi.

"It's not his mask I'm interested in getting under." Winks, nudges, knowing looks, and varying degrees of chuckles were exchanged.

Iruka looked back down at the essay again. He recognized that they were about to start on another game of "speculate about various parts of Hatake Kakashi's anatomy," complete with a lot of hand gestures, and really, it had only been funny the first couple of times.

It was as though a concealment jutsu had just been dispelled. After all, it wasn't as though the jounin hadn't lived in this village for the past twenty-odd years. Kakashi's shock of hair and even more shocking orange book were a familiar sight in Konoha, usually glimpsed in passing or out of the corner of your eye. If you turned to look back, he usually wasn't there. Kakashi-san, for all his notoriety, had been surprisingly anonymous. Iruka had known next to nothing about him before his students had ended up on Kakashi's team, and even now what little he did know was filtered through Naruto's stories.

But now... Maito Gai's flyers had made the village aware of Kakashi. And like an optics trick, once you'd noticed he was there you couldn't not notice him again.

And now that Kakashi-san's love life had been brought to everyone's attention, people noticed that too. Several men and women had already confessed their undying love for the jounin, with varying degrees of seriousness. And earlier, someone had actually tried to bribe Iruka to pass Kakashi-san a love note along with the scroll for whatever his next mission was.

And the speculation... Because ninja know that information can mean the difference between life or death, they all tend to be horrid gossips. So Iruka had already been asked his opinion on what Kakashi looked like under the mask, if Kakashi liked men, if Kakashi liked women, what he thought Kakashi found attractive, why Kakashi was single, if Kakashi's obsession with porn was a sign that he was good in bed or a sign that he was still probably a virgin...

Frankly, Iruka was getting just a little sick of Hatake Kakashi.

And he still hadn't even actually met the man.

And thanks to last chapter's reviewers: Rabid (Winter is the WinterOfOurDiscontent, of course ;) ...ask me about summer), Smoking Panda, Azamiko, Dark Closure, snow887, Polka Dot, diamond, Shellyraeleen, Nanashi Ni, ruka-kun, dyingstarelipsis, SilverCrystal9, Nissie, SeaGoatsUnite, Redex, firedraygon, Caleuche, Kutsu, Elecia Pena, shinycry, RukaIayLomperGay, Insane Chipmunk, Puppylove, sleepdoesnothingforyou, El Conejo Morado, Scoodoo58, CuriousDreamWeaver, DragonSteel, AMie, kaitou-marron, GoldenRat, YumiAngel, Mariemaia1, and Wolfkun.

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